


Kids These Days

by osprey_archer



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-28
Updated: 2018-12-28
Packaged: 2019-09-29 07:18:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,313
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17199038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/osprey_archer/pseuds/osprey_archer
Summary: When Natasha flubs a mission, her teacher Miss Underwood complains about how soft the Red Room has gotten since the good old days.





	Kids These Days

“The problem,” Miss Underwood says, “is that you’re spoiled.”

They are driving through the New England autumn, the trees flaming red and gold. Natasha scrunches down in her seat. She is going to spend the rest of her life peeling potatoes in the Red Room’s basement, so why should Miss Underwood waste her breath?

But of course Miss Underwood loves nothing more than an opportunity to complain about how soft Red Room girls are these days, since the fall of Communism. “When I was a girl, the Red Room made us tough.” She lifts one hand from the steering wheel and makes a fist. She is wearing gloves– she always does when she’s in civilian clothes – but Natasha knows that two of her fingers are metal. The girls whisper about those metal fingers sometimes in the night. “We woke before dawn to begin our training and only went to bed hours after dark. We slept handcuffed to our beds. And our beds were lined up in rows in a dormitory like a barn. None of these cushy little rooms with just six girls each, like you’ve got.”

Another sign that the current crop of girls are spoiled, probably: they have enough energy to whisper in the dark, rather than collapsing instantly into sleep. 

“We lived on black bread and kasha,” Miss Underwood says. She is warming to her theme: the glow of nostalgia has entered her voice. “We took cold showers every day, even in the depths of winter. We always wore our gym clothes, no matter how cold it grew. Whereas you! You have coats!” 

Natasha’s suggestion that Miss Underwood bit her fingers off herself was a big hit with the girls. “But why would she do that?” Galya objected – Galya _would_ , she couldn’t come up with good stories herself so she always poked holes in everyone else’s – “To show she was tough,” said Yelena, who always backed Natasha up. “She probably spit her own fingers right into Allen Dulles’s face.”

The whole dorm groaned in delighted horror. 

“You couldn’t recite the Short Course if your life depended on it. Marxism, Leninism, Stalinism – these are all just names to you.” Miss Underwood pauses to light a new cigarette from the stub in her mouth. The stub goes out the window. “ _I_ had to kill one of my comrades for my initiation. Whereas you killed some random man you had never met before. With a bag over his head! Did you think that all your marks were going to have bags over their heads? Is that why you failed?”

From now on Yelena, everyone in the dorm will walk past her without speaking – without even looking at her, while Natasha cleans the floor on her hands and knees. She’s made herself a non-person. 

Miss Underwood swivels to face her. The car is headed directly off a curve in the road. “Is it?” 

“No!” Natasha shrieks. “No!” 

“Of course not,” Miss Underwood agrees. She straightens the car just in time to save them from flying right off the road into a tree. “So why didn’t you push your mark off the cliff?” 

Natasha picks at a hole in her jeans. She has been attending an American boarding school where the girls all buy their jeans pre-ripped. Miss Underwood refused to spend money on such a thing, so Natasha ripped her own jeans on the sly. “I don’t know.” 

“Natka.” Miss Underwood’s voice is clipped. 

“I thought the fall might not kill him,” Natasha blurts. Belinda’s father was tall but very thin, and he had stood very near the edge of the cliff to take in the beauty of the waterfall. Natasha had stood a few paces behind him, insisting that she was afraid she might fall, and he had laughed at her, but had not insisted. What an idiot. No one in the Red Room would have let her shrink from anything out of fear. 

She had looked at his puffy jacket, and the height of the cliff, and thought of Belinda back at the picnic table – Belinda who refused to come see the waterfall because she had worn utterly inappropriate shoes for this jaunt into the wilderness. Belinda so excited to see her Chihuahua Max that she talked to him the whole afternoon and practically ignored her father. 

Natasha imagined running back to the picnic table, shouting _Your father fell!_ The screams, the ambulance, the flashing lights and sirens and the stretcher, and his hand – his pointing finger – rising up under the blanket – _She pushed me_. The words rattling out with his dying breath. Belinda’s mouth stretching into a shriek, no sound coming out, like the Munch painting. Max shivering on the cold ground, scurrying around her ankles and barking his high piping barks. 

Belinda’s father turned away from the waterfall, hands in his coat pockets. “We’d better get back before Lindy gets bored,” he said, and Natasha trailed him back down the path. His legs looked long and stork-like. 

Natasha’s hands are shaking. She tucks them under her thighs. 

“You chickened out,” Miss Underwood pronounces. 

Natasha’s knees are pale through her ripped jeans. She nods. Everything that seemed so paralyzingly vital seems stupid now. 

“In Stalin’s day, we would have shot you for insubordination. Or no: one of the other girls would have killed you with her bare hands, just like I had to snap Masha’s neck. I can still feel the moment when her bones gave and her body went limp…”

Miss Underwood takes the cigarette from her lips and breathes out a long stream of smoke. “That’s what we did in the old days,” Miss Underwood says, “to traitors. But now…” She tosses the half-smoked cigarette out the window.

Natasha is trembling all over like Belinda’s little Chihuahua. 

“Now,” says Miss Underwood – and she must have timed this lecture down to the second, because she jerks the car off the road into a little gravel parking strip next to a trail. “Now, you’re getting another chance.”

Natasha lets out a gasp. 

“It’s because we’ve lost too many girls this month,” Miss Underwood says, disgusted. “What did they expect when you’re all so soft? They’re thinking about bringing Olga Petrovna back from the kitchens, too. A complete collapse of discipline. How will you girls ever get anything done if there aren’t consequences for failure? I had to go on the run for nearly a decade after Leviathan failed.” 

Miss Underwood _failed_ once? Oh, wait till the other girls hear this. Natasha’s stock will shoot right up. It will nearly cover this hiccup. 

“There’s a rifle in the trunk,” Miss Underwood directs, “and one of those ridiculous orange hunting caps. Make sure you take it off before you reach the golf course. He’s golfing down there: he goes every Saturday afternoon. Civilians,” Miss Underwood says, marveling at the stupidity of people who have routines. 

“I won’t let you down,” Natasha promises. This is a reprieve. No bag over his head, but she won’t be close enough to see his face. She won’t have to feel his shoulder blades jerking under his coat when she pushes him over the cliff. The muscles jerking tight as he tries to catch himself, and then – nothing, as he falls. 

“I know you won’t,” Miss Underwood says. She smiles. Her teeth are disturbingly white – because she’s spent so much time in America, everyone says. “I’ll bite off your trigger finger if you do.” 

Natasha’s face must be a study, because Miss Underwood laughs. She nearly shoves Natasha out of the car. “Go quick now. If you’re fast, we’ll have time to spy on Director Carter afterward.”

Spying on Director Carter always puts Miss Underwood into a good mood. There might be ice cream. “I’ll be fast,” Natasha promises.

“That’s the only way to do it. Don’t give yourself time to think.” 

Natasha sets off into the woods.


End file.
